Though the banjo might seem to relegate this decidedly non-bluegrass trio to the alt-country fringes, the buoyant melodies and heart-tugging harmonies on the album-opening "Die Die Die" and "Will You Return?" owe more to the early Beatles. Despite the stripped-down, largely acoustic arrangements, the 14 cuts here cover an impressively expansive musical terrain, with "Pretty Girl from Chile" and "Pretty Girl from San Diego" full of twists and surprises. Elsewhere there are echoes of influence from the Band, the Burritos, the Everlys, and beyond, but the music of this North Carolina family band refuses to be pigeonholed. --Don McLeese
The Avett Brothers release The Second Gleam; six new songs offered with the natural lyrical clarity and honest delivery that has become synonymous with their name. With this addition to their growing body of work, Scott and Seth Avett establish a series, while further separating their writing from the modern landscape of music, popular or otherwise. Following in the initial footsteps of the first Gleam recording, this second installment sings to the uncommon senses of the common man. The record walks calmly and powerfully among fragile and hard-learned themes of life and song, passing through loss, change, hope, death, dedication to family, late nights in the hospital, love as always and much more. At once plain and poetic, simple and complicated as those who will give their time to hear it, we find: The Second Gleam.
